Research and Advocacy Pillars
Our team’s extensive study of Philippine democracy and information ecosystem have allowed us to identify the following interrelated action research and advocacy pillars: (1) Exposing Disinformation Economies in the Global South, (2) Empowering Tech Workers and Whistleblowers, and (3) Deliberative Spaces for Citizen Empowerment.
Exposing Disinformation Economies in the Global South
Disinformation economies have worsened the state of the local information ecosystem and have ushered in a fractured public sphere, thus necessitating efforts to rebuild shared spaces for dialogue and improve the quality of discourse.
Sigla Research Center aims to build on our eight years of research on disinformation economies by pursuing engaged action research and advocacy, connecting researchers with policy advocates and experts (i.e., Check My Ads-USA, Sleeping Giants Brasil, and What to Fix-Thailand) to expose “disinformers-at-the-top” and investigate transnational networks profiting from disinformation. As Sigla envisions itself to be the leading research institution monitoring domestic influence operations, especially during Philippine elections, we aim to expose bad actors, identify gaps in interventions, and demand greater accountability from social media platforms, ad and PR agencies, and state actors. Collaborative action and advocacy can be amplified by establishing regional learning spaces within Southeast Asia and other Global South regions between and among academics and civil society actors. We believe that Sigla can help deepen researcher-activist-policymakers networks in Southeast Asia that have been seeded by the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Global Technology for Social Justice Lab (GloTech) South-to-South Knowledge Exchange Spaces.
This action research and advocacy pillar involves research, advertising monitoring/tracking, and training, which altogether enhance and render the information ecosystem more resilient. Sigla is in collaboration with Victoire Rio (What to Fix-Thailand) for the Archetypes of Disinformation Actors research project to introduce profiles of bad actors and critically assess gaps in existing interventions. In partnership with the National Citizens’ Movement for Free Elections (NAMFREL), Sigla will embark on a study entitled “Mapping Local Disinformation in the 2025 Philippine Midterm Elections” to produce a research report tracking influence operations innovations and proposing whole-of-society approaches to address it. Sigla aims to build a team of dedicated researchers to conduct a long-term audit/advertising monitoring of brands, social media disinformers, and politicians. Together with local civil society organizations, we can bring research into action by applying pressure to advertising and public relations firms in the Philippines. Toward this end, Sigla plans to engage in a partnership with the Check My Ads Institute to provide capacity-building and training to in-house researchers and advocates.
Empowering Tech Workers and Whistleblowers
As transnational digital capitalism profits off human workers in the Global South contracted to mine environmental resources, create digital devices, and track and monitor social media content for the whole world, it becomes increasingly evident that digital innovations of Silicon Valley are produced on the backs–even the corpses–of workers in the Global South, whose voices demand to be heard.
What are the actual human and environmental costs of digital tech and AI in the Global Majority? Why are worker justice movements so uncommon in South/Southeast Asia in so far as the Philippines and India are the content moderation capitals of the world? Why are the faces of Big Tech whistleblowers so white? What would worker justice advocacy look like if their main leaders and advocates are the most precarious workers in the Global South? We at Sigla believe that the problems of democratic backsliding cannot be disentangled from economic precarity and extractivist economies most acutely experienced in the Global South.
To address this, Sigla aims to develop new empirical research and advocacy programs that center Global South digital workers (those directly working for Big Tech platforms as well as communication and digital workers in allied sectors of human rights and activism) with two goals in mind: (1) expose the social costs of digital tech and AI, including human costs focused on digital worker wellness and justice, as well as environmental costs centered on environmental and tech justice; and (2) mitigate these costs in order to strengthen advocacy work and local/regional accountability efforts against malicious actors.
Sigla aims to expose Big Tech’s linkages with extractive industries of mining and construction through investigative research and visual storytelling. By connecting with environmental advocates, human rights organizations, data scientists, and demographers/cartographers to create maps of extractivism, we can conduct environmental and human rights impact assessments to expose human and environmental costs of digital tech and AI, as well as the exploitative and uneven flow of digital labor and capital. Advocacy efforts include identifying and supporting tech whistleblowers through partnerships with legal experts: drafting legal tools and welfare programs to help protect actual whistleblowers, as well as creating multimedia shorts documentary-style with filmmakers, artists, and investigative journalists for popular dissemination through social media.
Sigla aims to establish worker wellness collectives, support systems, and healing spaces within the human rights sector, the academe, and the media industry who stand as frontliners in civil society. As practitioners are far too often caught up with project implementation and have no room to reflect on precarious working conditions, Sigla’s intervention is crucial in empowering digital workers to effectively sustain advocacy work. In partnership with local civil society organizations, we hope to gather the most vulnerable and disempowered workers for regular wellness sessions in the first year; medium and long-term interventions will be crafted and co-designed with workers themselves over a series of workshops to directly address their needs.
Deliberative Spaces for Citizen Empowerment
Digital transformations and democratic backsliding have resulted in a polarized and disempowered citizenry, posing significant challenges to the country’s overall democratic capacity. This requires finding innovative ways of creating shared spaces and citizen empowerment that go above and beyond current approaches to democratic participation.
Our third action research and advocacy pillar brings hope and inspiration by showing local challenges are best overcome by citizen-led community engagements. Our approach at Sigla involves curating spaces of citizen deliberation and informed dialogue that also makes for grounded and collaborative public policy. All activities outlined below contribute to nurturing spaces that foster collaborative action between and among empowered citizens.
Sigla plans to be the leading research center in employing the research and action methodology of inclusive citizen deliberation to empower ordinary citizens and shape collective action plans. We plan to work with partners in applying this methodology to questions such as: human rights, AI regulation, social media regulation, etc. We are aiming to implement deliberative minipublics on social media regulation, which has been a longstanding issue within the human rights community and the broader public sphere. Outcomes and recommendations of the deliberation will be lobbied into public policy by Sigla and partners in civil society.
Sigla likewise aims to extend the Community Engagement Fund where we incubate community interventions for citizen education, narrative strategy, community dialogue and depolarization, etc. Led by Dr Nicole Curato, Sigla aims to introduce Deliberative Democracy Fellows–entrusted to spearhead community projects focused on enhancing deliberative democracy principles—and the annual Youth Deliberative Democracy Summer School, an immersive program for young advocates and civil society practitioners to engage concepts and methods of deliberative democracy, finding ways to integrate such approaches within their respective practices. Sigla hopes to gather inspiring stories of democratic engagement via a podcast by grassroots organizations and ordinary citizens as they advance principles of deliberative democracy and human rights.